


The Healing Properties of Felt-Tip Pens

by Echo



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Rapid Healing, Self-Harm (if you squint), Steve Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 07:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Echo/pseuds/Echo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rapid healing has worked wonders on Steve Rogers' body, but occasionally it really screws with his head. In the aftermath of torture, Bruce Banner helps Steve to reconcile mind and body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Healing Properties of Felt-Tip Pens

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written as a fill for this prompt:  
> http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/8247.html?thread=17351735#t17351735
> 
>  
> 
> _Steve is captured and tortured. Don't care why, but the torture is extreme. After all, whatever they do to him, he just heals. [...] Steve is convinced that now that his body is okay, his mind should be too. His super healing only makes it more difficult to deal with the trauma. [...]_
> 
>  
> 
> This fic does mention some of the torture, and it _is_ violent torture, but it is discussed only briefly, in the form of recollections.

There was the briefest moment, the tiniest spark of something which could have been pain in Steve's knuckles. It traveled, short and sharp and immeasurably short lived, up the tendons in his forearm and bicep, fading from existence in his shoulder. As always, the thud of the punching bag echoed far louder and longer than that momentary, blessed burst of physical sensation.

It was supposed to hurt. He was supposed to feel it hurting. After everything that had happened, why couldn't he make it hurt?

Steve punched the bag again, harder, and again, heavier, paying little heed to style or technique. He focused instead on those tiny, fleeting sensations. Tried to make them last longer, travel further, persist in a way that nothing ever seemed to. He lost time like this, he knew, but at the very least he was losing it on his own terms.

The soft sound of someone clearing their throat brought him back to himself. Recognizing the tone without looking, he gave himself a moment to center his thoughts again, reaching for a gym towel from the shelf.

The towel had the Stark Industries logo on it.

Of course it did.

Steve wiped his face and neck, then turned, carefully folding the towel and placing it on a nearby bench.

"Doctor Banner. I don't normally see you down here," he said. Banner's hands were tucked away in his pockets, shoulders very slightly hunched in a way that Steve recognized as a habitual attempt to look small. The man probably didn't even realize that he was doing it. Steve smiled in his most non-threatening way, to which Doctor Banner raised an amused and all too knowing eyebrow.

"No, you really don't. Vigorous cardiovascular exercise tends to bring out the worst in me."

Steve looked away. He knew about the Hulk's heart rate trigger, would never dream of asking Banner to put himself or any of the others in that kind of danger unless absolutely necessary. But that didn't explain why the doctor had made his way down here. As if hearing Steve's thoughts, Banner smiled.

"However, I suspect that if you don't come up for air soon, the others will insist on staging an intervention." He smirked. "Tony in particular seemed keen to be on the other side of one."

Steve blinked, unfamiliar with the terminology. "A what?"

Banner gestured a silent request to enter the room proper. Steve stepped aside, and Banner slipped past him. 

"Since they released you from the carrier, you've spent more time in the company of punching bags than not. The others are thinking about intervening." Banner looked up for a moment as he checked for understanding. "Intervene. _Intervention._ " He sat himself down on a vacant weights bench.

Steve nodded slowly. "Oh, I didn't realize..." It was true, he hadn't realized quite how much time he had lost down here. Or that it had been quite so noticeable. "Time really does fly, doesn't it?"

He found his own bench to sit on, mirroring the doctor, and tried for a smile. He was a leader, he had to look like he wasn't balancing precariously on the edge of a breakdown. He most definitely needed to discourage any thought of intervening. 

Banner, however, didn't seem convinced. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees and shoulders hunched. "They wouldn't tell us the details of what happened, but they told us enough. It's okay, you know. No one's expecting you to be one hundred percent."

"I am though. Fully healed," Steve replied, a little too quickly, like that wasn't half the problem. He held up his arms in demonstration, showing the clear, smooth skin of his wrists, the unblemished white of his forearms. Banner looked at one arm, and then the other, then settled his gaze back on Steve's face.

"So... All this exercise is just your way of checking that everything still works, post-healing?" He asked, and this time it was Steve's turn to drop his gaze.

"I know everything still works, this is hardly the first time the serum has repaired serious injury."

Banner remained silent, but the silence had enough of a question all to itself. Steve clasped his hands together, intertwining his fingers and pressing hard enough to bruise. He knew that the moment he let up the pressure the damage would heal, that no bruise would ever show, and yet...

"It's relaxing. It makes me feel..." He hesitated, because that was it, really. A moment to _feel_ his injuries, even if he couldn't see them. "...calm." He finished, lamely.

Banner smiled with warm humour, eyes flicking briefly down to Steve's clasped hands. "Given how long you've been down here, I can only assume you're rapidly approaching zen." 

Steve had no idea what a zen was, but the sentiment didn't need translating.

"I'm fine, doctor," he reiterated. "Completely healed."

"So you said." Banner's smile changed then, lost its humour and became sad, pensive. "It's a problem I know well."

Steve blinked, running the last few sentences through his head to see if there was something he might have misinterpreted. He couldn't identify anything. Fortunately, Banner continued by himself.

"You draw, don't you, Captain?"

Steve nodded slowly, feeling that this entire conversation was rapidly diverging from any sort of sensible path. "I sketch, sometimes. I'm not very good, but..."

"Do you have any markers? Felt-tip pens?"

Steve hesitated, thinking of the various gifts he had found in his room when he first arrived. Stark could be called a lot of things, but 'stingy' was certainly not one of them.

"Yes, probably. I mostly use pencil, or charcoal, but Stark gave me all sorts of things. Why?"

Banner actually seemed a little hesitant. "Could I borrow them?"

\----

The selection of felt-tip markers was actually quite large, now that he looked at it. Large, nearly to the point of exhaustive. He offered the case to Banner without a word.

"These are perfect, thank you." Banner smiled at him with warmth, then cast his gaze over Steve's body in a way that would have made him self-conscious, were he not so used to being the center of attention. "I'll need a minute or so, why don't you take a shower?"

"It's all right, Doctor, I don't mind waiting."

Banner glanced down and away, doing a very poor job of hiding his amusement. "Please, Captain, call me Bruce. And, well... You really should consider taking a shower."

"Oh..." Steve felt his face grow suddenly warm. He'd been in the gym for hours, of course he ought to wash. "Sorry... I'll... Only be a minute."

True to his word, he was stripped, washed, dressed and back in the small sitting area in proper military time, only to discover that Banner had moved his desk chair and a small end table in to the middle of the room, facing the sofa. For a horrible second Steve's imagination saw an interrogation room, but then Bruce sat in the central chair, placing a smallish selection of the felt tip markers on the end table, and the illusion was broken. He gestured for Steve to sit on the sofa, and bemused but curious, Steve obliged.

"There's something..." Bruce began, then hesitated. He glanced down at the markers, then down at his lap, never quite making eye contact with Steve. He took a slow breath, then spoke again. "There's a technique I used to use. I don't know if it will help in your case, but I'm pretty sure it won't do any harm... Would you mind...?"

Ah. Well that explained something, at least. Doctor Banner's file had mentioned his skill at meditation, one of the ways he maintained his impeccable calm. Steve was pretty sure that it wasn't going to do a damn thing to help clear his own thoughts, but if nothing else it might help him to build a rapport with his team mate. He had to admit too, that he was curious as to the purpose for the markers. He nodded his assent, and was rewarded with a warm, relieved smile.

"You'll need to close your eyes." Bruce twitched his fingers beside his temples, then closed his own eyes briefly in demonstration. Steve nodded, then did as instructed. He breathed in deeply, then let it out.

Then waited. He could hear Bruce doing something with the items on the end table, but received no further instructions.

"Should I be doing something with my breathing?" he prompted, feeling awkward.

Bruce made an amused huff that wasn't quite a laugh. "If you like."

Steve felt his shoulders tighten. He trusted Doctor Banner, insofar as they were members of the same team, and he was reasonably confident that this wasn't some strange practical joke, but this experience was leaving him feeling more vulnerable than he would have liked.

Something small and cold touched the skin just up from his wrist and he flinched, eyes flicking open without thinking. Bruce looked startled for several seconds, before holding up the marker and averting his eyes.

"Sorry, I should have warned you..."

"You're... drawing on me?"At that, Bruce mouth curved slightly.

"I am, yes. But I'm not Tony, or Clint. I solemnly swear not to draw penises on your arm while your eyes are closed."

"I... Wait, what?" Steve stumbled out.

Bruce put the felt-tip down and laid his hand palm down gently over the place where he had been drawing. "I give you my word, Captain, I want to help. I'm not going to take advantage of your trust, but this will work better if you close your eyes, just for a few minutes."

The hand on Steve's arm was warm, soft. Softer than it should have been, given Banner's rough and rural life, but that was part and parcel of his condition. Bruce's body regularly reset itself to very nearly pristine condition, a side effect of the post-Hulk transformation. Steve nodded again, then let his eyes fall closed. After a few seconds, he felt the marker on the skin of his arm again, but this time he kept his eyes closed.

"Have you ever heard of a mirror box?" Bruce asked, his voice soft, conversational. Steve shook his head, and Bruce continued. "It's a device invented to help patients with phantom limb pain after traumatic amputation. It's essentially... Captain?"

"They didn't actually..." Steve interjected, all too aware of how tense he had suddenly become. "They said they would, threatened, but they stopped when they hit bone. They didn't cut all the way..." He stopped, reminding himself to breathe. He was glad now that his eyes were closed. He didn't want to see Banner's reaction.

He felt it, though, a soft thumb brushing backwards and forwards over the pulse point in his wrist, subtly encouraging his hands to loosen from the fists they had formed.

"Okay." Banner said eventually. "That would be one of the details that SHIELD decided not to share with us. I'm sorry, Captain, I didn't mean to trigger any bad memories. Do you want to stop?"

If Steve's eyes had been open, he would have blinked in confusion.

"But if you didn't know, then why did you bring it up?"

"I didn't mean to, specifically. I was only mentioning it as background information. Do you need to take a few minutes?"

Steve considered the question seriously. He was well aware of just how badly either answer could go for him.

He shook his head. If he couldn't demonstrate his ability to keep things together here, in his own sitting area with his team mate, then his team would never be able to give him their trust when it really mattered.

After what seemed like an exceptionally long time but was probably only seconds, Steve heard Banner speak softly, something that was probably "okay", but could have been something else, then he felt the tip of the marker on his skin once more. The soothing touch on his wrist continued though, gentle, reassuring brushes of Banner's thumb.

"Sometimes people who have lost a limb feel as though it is still experiencing discomfort. Some report severe pain, cramping, others just minor complaints like itching or tingling. But it's almost impossible to do anything about it, because there's nothing to scratch, no muscle to stretch away the cramp.

"A mirror box is just a large box with a mirror placed in the middle. People who experience phantom pain put their good limb in one side, and their stump in the other, then watch the mirror from the good side."

Steve waited for more, but there wasn't any. Just the sound of Banner exchanging one marker for another. "I don't understand..."

The hand which had been stroking the inside of his wrist squeezed gently, reassuringly, then returned to its earlier motions.

"They scratch the place where the itch would be on the good leg, but their eyes see the reflection in the mirror. Their brain processes that the missing limb has been scratched as well."

"And it makes the pain go away?"

"Sometimes. Not always. The human nervous system may just be an electrical signal transmitter, but the mind is a lot more complicated then that." He could hear a strange sort of melancholy in Banner's voice.

There was a pause, and then, "I'm going to do something now, Captain, and it might hurt a little. I promise it won't be for long, and then we'll be done. Is that going to be okay?"

Steve felt his heart rate speed up at those words, and had to make a conscious effort not to open his eyes, but he nodded.

He felt the fingers from his wrist move away to support his forearm, then there was a pressure where Banner had been drawing. A thumb, most likely, given the size and distribution. The touch started out gentle, but rapidly turned firm, hard, digging in. Steve's brow furrowed even as he made himself relax, willed down his fight reflex.

The pressure was hard enough to bruise, just like before, a focused point of pain which he already knew would fade before it even had a chance to truly bloom. He clamped his jaw closed and let himself feel it for as long as it would last.

Then it stopped. The pressure, and bare moments later, also the pain. Steve emptied his lungs slowly through his teeth, waiting, although he wasn't sure for what.

"Okay, you can open your eyes now."

Steve did, eyes immediately drawn to the place on his arm where Banner had been working.

There was a bruise.

Dark blue, fading around the outside, roughly the size and shape of a thumb. An actual, visible bruise.

Steve inhaled just a little bit too quickly, not a gasp but close, and looked up to Bruce. Who smiled, and held up a navy blue marker.

"It'll wash off with soap and water, but until that happens..." Banner shrugged, letting the sentence fall between them.

Looking again, it was clear that the discoloration had indeed been drawn on. It was fake, he could see that clear as day now that he knew, and yet... Steve closed his eyes, counted to five, then opened them. The stain was still there, still black and blue. 

"How did you know...?" Steve began to ask, touching his own, slightly larger thumb lightly over the mark.

"You're not the only person to wake up from torture without a scratch," came Banner's reply. "Normal people get their 'souvenirs'. The scars tell the world that you're not okay. They give you _permission_ to be not okay. But if you don't get to keep the scars, well. It can be difficult."

"So... You just draw the scars back on?"

Bruce made a sound that might have been a chuckle.

"A mirror box, of a sort. A trick to let your brain see the things it needs to see, to let itself heal."

Steve exhaled, a breath that he hadn't known he was holding. "Doctor Banner, you're a genius." he said earnestly.

Banner smiled and looked down, clearly embarrassed by the praise but pleased nevertheless. "The real credit should go to Dr Ramachandran, of course. He invented the mirror box technique, I just adapted his work." Banner picked out a few markers from the pile; a few shades of blue, a black, a dark red. He held then fanned out towards Steve.. 

"Captain, I understand your need for privacy, but if you want to, you can show me your scars."

Steve stared at the markers in Bruce's hand for quite a bit longer than he probably should have, but Bruce made no comment.

Eventually, hesitantly, he took one. A dark red, so rusty that it was bordering on brown. He flicked the lid off with his thumb and held it, hovering very slightly above his arm in consideration.

He drew a line, long and thin and precise, following the course of the tendons from wrist to elbow. He knew for a fact that the incision had followed the tendons, because he had watched as they cut. Tendons always seemed oddly white against the glossy red of the surrounding blood and muscle.

The line looked wrong.

It was technically accurate, of course, precise in both placement and length, but the artist in him could see how flawed it was. The red mark showed a clean cut, something made with a scalpel or some other thin, sharp blade. The real scar should have rougher, with the uneven marks of a serration.

Steve swallowed down the instinct to throw the marker as far away from him as possible, and turned his artist's eye to his task.

He reached for another marker, this one tinged slightly with orange. Then a deep blue, then a charcoal grey, a half dozen different shades of red. He traced, and he shaded, and he blended. When the line on his arm was complete, he moved to his shoulder, then on again to his collarbone.

The fabric of his tee was getting in the way, so he reached for the hem and yanked it over his head. The markers in his hand took on a life of their own, as he covered every inch of skin with the stains he could see in his mind's eye.

His heart was racing, his lungs were burning, and the thumping in his head was so loud that it drowned everything else out. Everything but the colors which were finally, _finally_ showing the truth on his body, that he had been torn open. Ripped to pieces, over and over and over again. Sliced into pieces which refused to stay sliced.

Then there was something on his hand, preventing him from drawing, and for a split second he wanted to throw it off, attack whatever it was with the same viciousness that he had so recently been attacked, but he stopped himself. The something was another hand. Doctor Banner's hand, trying to soothe his frantic movements.

"Slow down Captain, you need to breathe."

Steve breathed, and was surprised when the burning in his lungs abated. He breathed again, then swallowed down the panic in his chest.

Banner reached for the markers still clutched in his hands, and for a moment Steve went to snatch them away. He wasn't finished yet... But then the rational part of him reasserted itself, and in a momentary swell of embarrassment he relaxed his grip. Banner took the pens and laid them aside, taking Steve's now empty hands between his own.

"You back with me now, Captain?" Banner asked, soft and patient. Steve looked up from his own decorated torso to see Banner's eyes, full of sympathy and concern and most importantly, of understanding.

Steve nodded. Banner smiled.

"Good. Just keep breathing for now. I promised the others I'd try to get you to come down to dinner tonight, but I think maybe you need a bit of calm right now. I'll run interference, if you like?"

Steve let his head drop just a little, fatigue suddenly catching up with him.

"No, that's all right. I'll come, I just..." He held his arms up in a sort of demonstrative shrug. "I suppose I really should take another shower, clean these off."

He really didn't want to, not yet. Not when the tension that had been pounding through his body and trying to crush his skull for the past week was finally starting to ease. Not when he was finally starting to feel human again. But he had to do this. He had already shown too much weakness in front of Banner. Now it was time to be strong again.

For the team.

Banner considered at the gruesome artwork covering Steve's body for several moments before looking up thoughtfully.

"Or alternatively... Do you have any shirts with long sleeves?"


End file.
